Men in the Workforce

For much of the past decade, the labor market has arguably been friendlier to women seeking employment than men. That’s because the jobs that have been disappearing in large numbers, like machine operator, are predominantly male oriented while occupations that have been expanding, like health aide, mostly implicate women.

More than a fifth of American men aren’t working. The solution is obvious. As indicated by writer Claire Cain Miller, men who have lost jobs in factories should seek employment as home health aides or in other expanding categories. But men are not racing to these emerging service sector jobs.

For one, they tend to require very different skills. They also pay a lot less. Projections indicate that many men will continue to find the labor market challenging. The two occupations projected to decline most quickly from 2014 to 2024 are locomotive firers and vehicle electronics installers. These occupational categories are 96 percent and 98 percent male, respectively. There are a handful of male-dominated occupational categories expected to grow rapid, however, including wind turbine technicians, commercial divers, and ambulance drivers.